Using the World Wide Web to Enhance Music Compact Disks

By CHARLES BERMANT

Published: May 5, 1997

It was an idea whose time never really came. But the music industry wants to keep trying.

Nearly three years ago, record companies and multimedia software publishers introduced the enhanced CD -- compact disks that can be played in a standard audio CD player or placed in a personal computer for various multimedia flourishes.

So far, the offerings have ranged from the Rolling Stones' ''Stripped,'' which offered some grainy video and photographs for the few fans who could get the balky disk even to play on their PC's, to more fully realized works like the recent multimedia re-issue of Paul Simon's ''Graceland,'' which contains documentary analysis of the musical and political climate that led to the creation of that 1986 album.

But so many enhanced CD's have been so unexciting and technically unreliable that the multimedia aspect seems to be an afterthought. And even among best-selling CD's with multimedia enhancement, like Aerosmith's ''Nine Lives'' and the ''Romeo and Juliet'' movie soundtrack, the multimedia material tends to be little more than a digital doily on recordings that would have sold well anyway, music executives say.

But now, two of the leading record companies, Sony Music and Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment North America unit, are trying to revive the multimedia music idea -- this time by going on line. Sony will retroactively enhance CD's by using World Wide Web sites to link multimedia content to existing disks; BMG will have users log onto America Online to add multimedia enhancement to new CD's.

Each new system uses the company's own technology, but the concept is basically the same: Insert a CD like Bob Dylan's ''Greatest Hits, Volume 1,'' into the CD-ROM drive of a personal computer, log onto the Internet and tap into the relevant Web site. Click on various screen options -- producing lyrics, video and reproductions of old newspaper articles -- and the CD automatically plays the relevant musical passage.

It is as if the Web ''creates a hand that reaches out and cues up the disk,'' said Jennifer Fromer, director of new media for Sony.

Whether audiophiles and cybernauts will embrace this capability or ignore it will not be known for at least several months. BMG plans a June album by the popular hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, ''Wu-Tang Forever,'' to be the company's first release under the America Online agreement. Later in the summer, Sony plans to open Web sites for the Dylan album and three others.

Sony's approach, in which a Web site can be made to interact with any existing audio CD, may potentially serve as a way to stimulate sales of older titles in the company's catalogue. BMG's technology, which requires certain formatting instructions to be encoded on the disk itself, will be initially used on new releases -- although the company does not rule out re-releasing old titles from its catalogue, with the required software code added.

Both companies decline to make any sales predictions, instead referring to more intangible goals: linking artist and audience, Sony says, and increasing listener satisfaction, according to BMG executives.

The two divergent approaches could lead to an industry-standards face-off -- if any other companies see enough promise in either technology to choose sides.

Sony has not yet decided whether to license its approach, called Connected, said Fred Ehrlich, its senior vice president in charge of new technology. But ''we are having conversations with other record companies,'' Mr. Ehrlich said, adding, ''It is to everyone's best interests to have one common brand associated with this technology.''

Licensing issues would not arise with the BMG approach, which was jointly developed with America Online. Kevin Conroy, BMG's senior vice president for marketing, said that any label wishing to adopt the process would be free to strike its own deal with the on-line access provider.

Under BMG's partnership with America Online, buyers of the Wu-Tang Clan CD who are not already America Online subscribers will get 50 free hours on line.

CD-ROM's that interact with Web sites are nothing new, of course. Many Internet games make use of a CD-ROM, and Microsoft, for instance, has added on-line components to its Encarta, Cinemania and Music Central disks. But the Sony and BMG technologies each offer new wrinkles.

Sony's Connected is based on the Shockwave software technology that is becoming increasingly popular on multimedia-intensive Web sites. It is Shockwave that enables Connected to tie video to specific lyrics in the case of the Dylan ''Greatest Hits'' disk, for example.

After Connected's debut on the Web, anyone whose CD-ROM drive is running a new or old copy of the Dylan album, originally released in 1967, will be able to tap into the on-line material. Three other CD's that will work with the Sony site are ''Aerosmith's Greatest Hits,'' the current ''Ben Folds Five'' album by the group of the same name, and a still-to-be-determined catalogue title from Ozzy Osbourne.

Because BMG's new on-line enhanced CD's will be developed to take advantage of the new technology, its service will be able to offer features that Connected cannot. A user, for example, can log onto the Web site to receive a password for unlocking a special bonus track on the disk that could not otherwise be heard. Or visitors to the Web site may be able to remix the audio -- silencing the lyrics, for instance, to turn the PC into a karaoke system.

''Many listeners are finding their way on line,'' Mr. Conroy of BMG said. ''We want to make sure that the time they spend there will be as positive an experience as possible.''

Whether it is a new title or one from the archives, music industry executives see potential value in Web links that can be used to update material related to an audio CD. The theoretical possibilities include, say, posting the on-line itinerary in the year 2007 of a Bob Dylan tour to commemorate the 40th anniversary of ''Greatest Hits.''

More practically, the option of adding the multimedia after the fact could let the artist concentrate on making music first, and leave the video clips and electronic scrapbook stuff for later.

Liz Heller, executive vice president of Capitol Records, a unit of the EMI Group P.L.C., said that Paul McCartney had wanted to include multimedia material on his soon-to-be-released CD ''Flaming Pie,'' but that doing so would have delayed the album. So, instead, its promotion will include an elaborate Web page -- though not one, in this case, that interacts with the CD. (Ms. Heller said she would leave it to others to work the kinks out of the on-line enhanced technology before Capitol would consider taking the leap.)

By some measures, retroactive enhancements of older CD's and continued tinkering with the enhanced CD format may seem superfluous now that a new multimedia-rich technology will soon be hitting the market: the digital versatile disk, or DVD.

But music industry executives predict that the DVD will take several more years to begin truly supplanting the CD. And Albhy Galuten, vice president for interactive programming of the Universal Music Group, said that on-line interactive techniques for CD's should be easily transferable to DVD's, anyway.

''DVD is merely a format,'' Mr. Galuten said. ''And this shouldn't make a difference to the content.''

Besides, Ms. Fromer of Sony said, ''We want to give our fans something that is accessible today; while DVD has amazing potential, it isn't at people's fingertips right now.''